Shying away from a concussion

Jeannine Stein, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles TimesCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Heading the ball is a staple move in soccer, but it comes with a price: possible concussions. As coaches and doctors debate how to deal with the risk, researchers are drawing closer to understanding who is more likely to stick their neck out.

Extroverts, according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, are more willing to go head-first into the ball.

A team led by Frank Webbe, psychology professor at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, administered two psychological tests to 60 teenage and adult male soccer players -- one measuring personality traits such as extroversion and conscientiousness, the other sensation-seeking behavior. A group of 20 non-soccer-playing athletes with minimal experience in contact sports acted as a control.

Players more apt to head balls had higher levels of extroversion. Tall players also headed the ball more often, but there was no correlation between this group and extroversion.

"If you have to counsel a player who heads the ball a lot because they're tall, that's easy to change," Webbe says. "But if this is part of their personality dynamics, that's harder. ... They see themselves as aggressive players who are willing to take risks."